All things Vocab

 Ah.. another great day so much to take in. 

Dorothy gave a great insight to the digital tools already avaiable to us. How did I ever miss 'Smart Chip' ? Maybe there is a need for a toolkit on the harnessing these digital tools that exist in the background of tools we already access? Certainly lots of options to explore over the coming break. So much to learn, so little time. The statistics around exposure to vocabulary are not new to me, but are always sobering. Who knew Hairy Maclary could be so great for teaching language? How many parents have read 'rollicking' and 'gambolled' without really understanding the meaning? I can build word conscieniousness. 

Then came the realisation that actually I am doing my students a disservice by not making these words available to the learners in my room. Yes, I try to use rich oral language but am doing the same in my reading, or do I give limited opportunities for students to move words from their receptive vocabulary to their productive vocabulary? If you don't plan it, it won't happen! How many 'see it, say it. write it' opportunities are there in my reading/writing programme? 

I think I do the decoding phonemes part of vocabulary building well, maybe that was because of my junior school background. Certainly I haven't nailed the word morphology. Some of the meanings of the affixes was new to me. Thank you for the prebuild digital tool, it will make including this so much easier.  The key for me will be to decide to a few tools, teach well them and then use them well. As time goes on I can add one or two new activities, to interchange with existing tools, each term to build my bank of resources.

Thank you for the access to the resources. We are using 'The Code' as a tool within school, it gives it a structure similar to the UK progressions. So teaching of spelling patterns in a structured way is covered. There are opportunities for me to extend students with Reciporical Teaching and building capapbilities as group members using roles. This is something that I have touched on before in the our Kahui Ako work with Louise Dempsey. If I am hearing it from two sources it reiterates to me the importance of it to my learners! Go deeper, not wider, at my current year level this is truely possible.

It is time for me to reflect on my current practise, have a refresh over the upcoming break ready for the last two terms. I can see coming back into the folder regularly to check in with where I am and next steps for teaching with regard to the literacy programme I am implementing.